approach
change from the inside, out.
When you feel safe enough to express the deepest feelings and stories of your life, I believe something magical happens. Expressing your truth soothes your nervous system and connects you more fully to who you really are. When you take the time to listen to what your body, heart, and soul are trying to tell you, new pathways and possibilities open up.
We’ll look together to see your situation for how it is, how you want it to be – and then work together to bridge the gap.
Depth-oriented and practical, my approach seeks to unearth the roots of your suffering and resource you with the skills and practices that help strengthen resilience, connection, and joy.
Deciding to find a therapist — which I see as a collaborative partner and guide on your healing journey — is a radically courageous step towards showing up more fully — not just for yourself, but also for the people, projects, communities, and causes that you care about. I welcome and am grateful for the opportunity to explore working together.
my practice weaves together:
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The body and nervous system guide how we show up in the world, at work, in all of our relationships: "Am I safe or unsafe?" Trauma usually happens when we experienced something that was too fast and too much, and without enough support to digest and process fully all of what happened. We may find ourselves stuck in shame or various trauma responses such as fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or appease modes, even when we know it no longer serves us in the present. Trauma healing work teaches, over time, how to slow down, to remember and soothe the nervous system, and when needed, to grieve and release stuck emotions and energy. Through co-regulation and regulation practices, we can learn to reconnect and respond, rather than react, with more choice and freedom.
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Modern society trains us to live primarily from our heads, which can keep us “productive” but also keeps us from being truly present. Buddhist philosophy offers insights into the roots of suffering - grasping, ill will, and ignorance – and embodiment practices that can help bring us back to balance. Instead of mentally fixating on what already happened but which we can’t change (the past) or what we fear might happen (the future), we can practice being present with what is happening now. Building awareness of and differentiating body sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions can help grow our capacity to understand and feel the whole range of our human experience. This helps us stay with and move through difficult situations and emotions, instead of fighting or burying them. In turn, this helps create more spaciousness inside and capacity for focus, calm, and self acceptance.
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You deserve to be seen and heard in all of your humanity – who you are, where you’ve come from, and how you seek to evolve in freedom. We hold awareness and sensitivity to how identities, power dynamics, and experiences in capitalist cis hetero white body supremacy culture and patriarchal systems intersect and can deeply harm and influence our sense of self, safety, and relationships with others. We appreciate and find strength in cultural, ancestral, and community connections to remember our inherent belonging and interconnectedness. To heal deeply and move through the world connected to our personal power and purpose is a revolutionary act, and we cannot do it alone. As Audre Lorde said, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
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As old structures fall apart, and change is accelerating all around us, what can we truly rely on? Making meaning of our lives, including the challenging and painful moments, grounds us in our deepest values and what is truly important in this life. While connection and community are essential in these times, we each walk our own unique personal path and journey marked by countless life lessons (perhaps magically and frustratingly created just for us?!) Connection with spirit and spirituality can look so many different ways — from intentional time in nature, meditation, guided journeys, or simply slowing down enough to listen to the small wise voice inside that actually has our highest good in mind. It takes such bravery to dig deeper and seek truth and freedom in life, rather than settle for comfort and security like many of us have been taught.
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Life is all about connection and relationship — to others, to ourselves, to the world around us. In an ideal world, our early caregivers would have been able to be aware of and attend to our needs and feelings in ways we mostly felt safe, protected, respected, and validated. When we don’t experience this in childhood, or perhaps experience painful relationship loss or betrayal as adults, we might go through life feeling a deep nagging sense of something missing inside. Our work then is often to cultivate these qualities of connection and security through trusted relationships with others and essentially, ourselves. Our deepest wounding usually happens in relationship, so naturally, our deepest healing can often happen through relationship as well.
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Expression is a human birthright. Many of us have been conditioned to silence our voices, instincts, intuition, and natural desires. For some, getting to the heart of an issue is easier through nonverbal ways of processing. Art making, dance, movement, and forms of play can help tap into our natural intuition and creative expression. Judgment-free and focusing more on process and authentic expression, expressive arts practices can help us to shed habits of perfectionism and attachment to outcome. It’s not how it looks, but how it feels. We can build trust and connection to our intuition, and often have fun in the process!
“Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important.
The reason it’s important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn’t just ourselves that we’re discovering.
We’re discovering the universe.”